Band of the Week

The post-rock thing has been done to death, seemingly with no shortage of bands eager to jump onto a genre whose members bear little resemblance to one another, except for song structure. The term is attributed to music journalist Simon Reynolds to describe bands that use rock instruments to create non-traditional rock based on musical soundscapes and textures, as opposed to their riff-driven traditional rock counterparts. As it turns out, Reynolds didn’t create the term—it had been floating around art-rock scenes for nearly a decade. He just used it better than most.

San Dimas four-piece the If, much like Reynolds, didn’t coin the genre, but they do it better than most. The band write long, haunting, sleepy-time instrumental melodies that can be easily compared to formidable post-rock acts like Explosions in the Sky or Sigur Rós, but such comparisons can only serve as a point of reference. The music is dreamy and minimal, shapeless and wandering, interspersed with sometimes lazy, sometimes forceful pulses of white noise and distorted sounds. The tone of the music is unmistakably sad, but the band isn’t ensnared in the idiom of the wistful pop group. They attack their music with a creative voracity that allows for a driving bass/drums tandem to sculpt dark images of emotional intensity.

More info and song clips on the band’s wedsite, www.theifmusic.com or www.myspace.com/theifmusic.